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“As the old saying has it, the left looks for heretics and the right looks for converts, and both find what they’re looking for. The effect is no doubt subliminal, but people who treat you like crap are, over time, less persuasive than people who don’t. If people on the Left are so unhappy about how many former allies are changing their views, perhaps they should examine how those allies are treated.” – Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit)

Reynolds wrote this over a decade ago, during the early years of Instapundit. Yet I believe it remains true today, and is one reason I believe the Democrats will lose the 2020 election bigly. They are alienating too many people, and alienating them at an increasing rate. They are attacking their own allies, too, over minor differences in dogma.

“WHEN WOMEN COMPLAIN ABOUT THE DISAPPEARANCE OF CHIVALRY, I’m prone to point out that chivalry was a system, one that imposed obligations of behavior on women and girls as well as on men. Likewise, when David Brooks complains that Edward Snowden is an unmediated man, I must note that in the civil society Brooks invokes, Presidents and other leaders were also mediated; they were not merely checked by Congress, courts, etc., but they were also checked by themselves, and a sense of what was proper that went beyond “how much can I get away with now?” Obama, too, is unmediated in that sense. That Brooks couldn’t see beyond his sharply-creased pants to notice that when it was apparent to keen observers even before the 2008 election is not to his credit. If the system of civil society has failed, it is in no small part because its guardians — notably including Brooks — have also failed.” — Prof. Glenn Reynolds, Instapundit.com Jun 11, 2013

To say that I find the norms of chivalry (battlefield conduct) and courtly behavior (behavior befitting a noble at court) persuasive is obvious – look at my name. The Paladins / Paladines of Charlemagne was the idealized role model and cautionary tale for the medieval knight, and the modern fantasy vision of the paladin appeals to a similar code of heroic ethics. Similarly, I admire the civilized norms of the past, as one of the symbols of the greatness of our civilization.

Jon Gabriel (a.k.a., @ExJon on Twitter) is the Editor-in-Chief of Ricochet. He is a political writer and marketing consultant, contributing articles to The Wall Street Journal, The New York Post, and USA Today among others. Until 2012, he served as Director of Marketing for the free-market Goldwater Institute, where he converted policy initiatives into compelling stories. In the private sector, Jon led marketing efforts for Cold Stone Creamery, Honeywell, and several technology companies. In his… [more]

Twitter used to be interesting. I signed up a decade ago and quickly became addicted. You could meet smart people with similar interests, funny people with disturbing interests, and get breaking news a day before the cable nets got around to it.

A lot has changed in 10 years. Today, Twitter is mostly dumb people yelling at each other and self-appointed hall monitors trying to shut down accounts they don’t follow. On Saturday, feminist Meghan Murphy was permanently banned for stating that men aren’t women. Sunday, conservative commentator Jesse Kelly was permanently banned for … who knows? Twitter gave no explanation. In response, ur-blogger Instapundit deactivated his account and others are likely to follow.

“Socialism is the Axe Body Spray of political ideologies: It never does what it claims to do, but people too young to know better keep buying it anyway.” – Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit)

Yes, I am hitting socialism again. It needs to be hit after that odious meme about the difference between fascism (one flavor of socialism) and communism (another flavor of socialism – and indeed what socialism was called before the communists demonstrated by example socialism’s shortcomings, and communism had to be renamed socialism) hit the interwebs recently.

Ben Weingarten is a senior fellow at the London Center for Policy Research. He writes on national security and foreign policy, economics, and politics for publications including The Federalist, where he is a senior contributor, as well as City Journal, Conservative Review and PJ Media. Ben is the founder and CEO of ChangeUp Media, a media consulting and production company dedicated to advancing conservative principles. He is also a 2015 Publius Fellow of the Claremont Institute. You can find his… [more]

I wanted to call your attention to his latest, as described in a provocative new Encounter Books broadside titled The Judiciary’s Class War, regarding what I would describe as the Supreme Court’s cultural and too frequently ideological progressivism.

Welcome to the Harvard Lunch Club Political podcast for January 29, 2018, it’s the The Glenn Reynolds Interview: Listen to it All edition of the show, episode number 160! Our special guest this week is the purveyor of Instapundit himself, Glenn Reynolds. We are truly psyched to have Glenn on. He represents the best in independent, libertarian, power-suspicious and iconoclastic podcast voices in the history of the internet.

We will have, in addition to the interview with Glenn, a discussion about gridlock and why it’s so bad after all. The New York Times blathers on about how Donald Trump has demolished the sweet, bipartisan spirit that had been, up until recently, embracing Washington for, how long? who knows?

Dad. Writes on culture, economics and business issues; published in The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and others. Interviewed on Fox News, Fox Business, CNNfn, & numerous radio shows. Purveyor at Whiskey Politics: Conversations with newsmakers on politics & culture. Guest Host on The Real Side Radio (70+ terrestrial stations on the GCN and Salem Radio Network). Whiskey Politics is found at Ricochet or by subscribing at iTunes, Stitcher, GooglePlay, & YouTube. Follow WP on T… [more]

Glenn Reynolds is one of the most important folks in the news. He runs Instapundit (now a PJMedia.com property), which provides newsworthy articles and content reported across mainstream media, Drudge Report, and many other outlets. Glenn and his team have a knack for picking the stories he knows people will be interested in. His site, created in 2001, has millions of loyal readers. Glenn is an author and law professor who has written for law reviews at several universities, including Columbia and Harvard. His articles have appeared in all the major daily newspapers as well as Fox News and MSNBC and he is currently a Contributor to USA Today.

On this episode of Whiskey Politics we discuss how media bias has changed reporting, CNN’s Jim Acosta and Stephen Miller, the Ace of Spades article, and the Justice Department redacting the tarmac meeting that took place between Attorney General Loretta Lynch and President Bill Clinton, right before the election.